The vicious X-rated abuse unleashed on camera and behind the scenes of the revealing new ABC documentary series on the political backstabbing in the Coalition’s Canberra coups

Nemesis, an ABC documentary about the turbulent coalition government of 2013-2022, will open some old wounds, with the participants’ views of each other – and of Donald Trump – openly expressed in shockingly foul language.

The nine-year government began with Tony Abbott as Prime Minister before being deposed by Malcolm Turnbull in an internal Liberal Party coup.

Mr Turnbull himself was then forced to step aside after being challenged by Peter Dutton, who in turn lost the follow-up vote to Scott Morrison.

Although two of the former Liberal leaders gave lengthy interviews, Mr Abbott and Peter Dutton declined to appear on camera.

ABC said Mr Abbott had ‘politely’ turned them down, although he was less polite when he told Mr Turnbull to ‘f*** off’, as the latter recalled.

Mr Turnbull is also called a ‘t***’ on the show, while Mr Morrison is branded ‘smug’ and an ‘arrogant a*******’.

Mr Turnbull joked that Mr Abbott used the word ‘f***’ so often ‘an able orator when it came to (its) use’.

There is also no love lost between him and his former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce, who was forced to step aside when his affair with a staffer – who later became his wife – was exposed.

At an infamous press conference in February 2018, Mr Turnbull blasted Mr Joyce, saying: ‘Barnaby made a shocking error of judgment when he had an affair with a young woman who worked in his office…’

“By doing this he has caused a world of woe for those women and shocked us all.”

Six years later, Mr Joyce said it still “hurts” that his leader said that about him and that he used what ABC coyly describes as “a four-letter word connected to another four-letter word” to describe Mr Turnbull to describe.

The insults keep coming, with one former coalition saying Mr Morrison operated under ‘delusions of grandeur’.

But there are also some elements of regret about what happened next, with Mr Morrison saying Mr Turnbull “was a friend”. Maybe someday we’ll be there again.’

The show has some compliments too, although they can also come as a double-edged sword, as Mr Joyce describes his old Cabinet colleague Christopher Pyne.

‘I find him incredibly entertaining and incredibly dangerous. Be very, very careful with Christopher Pyne.”

Mr Pyne said the Liberal Party’s three-term leadership changes were “deeply traumatizing and left serious scar tissue”.

‘Friendships are broken… people tell each other lies.’

Despite this, some are still keen to settle old scores and right what they believe has been wronged, such as Victorian Liberal Michael Sukkar.

“There were a lot of panicky backbenchers who bought into the idea that Malcolm Turnbull was the Messiah,” he says.

‘Malcolm Turnbull saw that the premiership fulfilled a predestined destiny, namely that he had to fill a gaping hole in his soul.

“And I suspect once he got there he realized that perhaps that gaping hole had not been filled by the premiership.”

It is not only internal coalition battles that are discussed in Nemesis, some international affairs are also discussed, such as the appeal of an angry Donald Trump, when he was still president of the US, to Mr Turnbull.

“Big bullying billionaires, they all think they are God’s gift to humanity,” Mr Turnbull said in calling out Mr Trump over a refugee swap deal with the US.

In addition to Mr. Abbott and Mr. Dutton, former Finance Minister Mathias Cormann and former Foreign Minister Julie Bishop also declined to participate.

Ms. Bishop was not alone among Liberal women unwilling to make this public, possibly out of fear of repercussions.

“I think women are punished differently,” former minister Karen Andrews told the show.

“And maybe we need to get better at actually fighting it out, a lot more than we are.”

Tasmanian Liberal MP Bridget Archer said Morrison’s inept handling of women’s issues was a key factor in the Coalition’s loss to Labor in the 2022 federal election.

‘Women of all ages had no confidence in him. “They were angry about the way all these issues surrounding women (like) Brittany Higgins were being addressed,” she said.

“It was overwhelming that people thought they didn’t trust him anymore.”

However, Mr Morrison said: ‘The documentary will … be a record of the period in which I have been deeply involved.’

‘It’s really for history and I always enjoy working on those types of projects.’

The first episode of the ABC series Nemesis airs on Monday at 8pm on ABC TV and iView.